The term Bildungsroman denotes a novel of all-around self-development. Used generally, it encompasses a few similar genres: the Entwicklungsroman, a story of general growth rather than self-culture; the Erziehungsroman, which focuses on training and formal education; and the Kunstlerroman, about the development of an artist. (The Space Between, 13) Although Great Expectations, Aurora Leigh, and Waterland may fit one of these more specific categories, for the purposes of comparison, I shall discuss the Bildungsroman genre as a whole and how it applies to all three. My definition of Bildungsroman is a distilled version of the one offered by Marianne Hirsch in "The Novel of Formation as Genre":
1. A Bildungsroman is, most generally, the story of a single individual's growth and development within the context of a defined social order. The growth process, at its roots a quest story, has been described as both "an apprenticeship to life" and a "search for meaningful existence within society."
2. To spur the hero or heroine on to their journey, some form of loss or discontent must jar them at an early stage away from the home or family setting.
3. The process of maturity is long, arduous, and gradual, consisting of repeated clashes between the protagonist's needs and desires and the views and judgments enforced by an unbending social order.
4. Eventually, the spirit and values of the social order become manifest in the protagonist, who is then accommodated into society. The novel ends with an assessment by the protagonist of himself and his new place in that society.
Great Expectations is widely considered to be a direct descendant of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, the prototypical Bildungsroman. Aurora Leigh takes the genre and complicates it with problems of gender in Victorian society. Waterland reconsiders personal growth in a postmodern context, using narrative not for description, but rather as the vehicle for maturation.
Malaeska—written in 1839 (serialized in The Ladies Companion/ published by Beadles in 1860)
Ann Sophia Stephens was born on March 30, 1810 in Derby, Connecticut, she was the daughter of Ann and John Winterbotham. He was the manager of a woolen mill owned by Col. David Humphreys. Her grandfather was William Winterbotham. Her mother died early and she was brought up by her mother's sister, who eventually became her stepmother. She was educated at a dame school in South Britain, Connecticut and started writing at an early age. She married Edward Stephens, a printer from Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1831 and they relocated to Portland, Maine.
While in Portland, she and her husband co-founded, published and edited the Portland Magazine, a monthly literary periodical where some of her early work first appeared. The magazine was sold in 1837. They moved to New York where Ann took the job of editor to The Ladies Companion and where she could further her literary work. This was also the time she adopted the humorous pseudonym Jonathan Slick. Over the next few years she wrote over twenty-five serial novels plus short stories and poems for several well known periodicals which includedGodey's Lady's Book and Graham's Magazine. She started her own magazine Mrs Stephens' Illustrated New Monthly in 1856, it was published by her husband. The magazine merged with Peterson's Magazine a few years later. Her first novel Fashion and famine was published in 1854.
The term "dime novel" originated with Stephens's Maleaska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, printed in the first book in Beadle & Adams Beadle’s Dime Novels series, dated June 9, 1860. The novel was a reprint of Stephens's earlier serial that appeared in the Ladies' Companion magazine in February, March, and April 1839. Later, the Grolier Club listed Maleaska as the most influential book of 1860. Some of her other work includes High Life in New York (1843), Alice Copley: A Tale of Queen Mary's Time (1844), The Diamond Necklace and Other Tale(1846), The Old Homestead (1855), The Rejected Wife (1863) and A Noble Woman (1871).
Fashion and Famine. One of the most popular novels of the prolific writer and her first long work, Fashion and Famine contrasts the fashionable society of Saratoga and Newport with the poor of New York. Published by four different publishers in New York, London, and Philadelphia, and translated into German and French, it would be dramatized in 1854. She would produceMalaeska, the first dime novel issued in the Beadle Dime Novel series in 1860.
Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter. This historical Indian romance is the first of the dime novels published by Erastus Beadle, selling 300,000 copies in its first year. The novel helps Stephens become one of the most popular authors of the mid-nineteenth century.
The Rejected Wife. Stephens's novel about the early life of Benedict Arnold is commended by the Continental Monthly for its accurate characterizations and details of period life. The book would be republished in 1876 as The Rejected Wife; or, The Ruling Passion.
A. Ambiguities in the Story/book:
1. How white settler and Indian princess got together; (miscegenation)
2. Whether or not the Indian shot at the white settler.
Previous to whites killing an Indian—Whites and Mohawks had an agreement to share hunting grounds.
Dutch British (Americans) Mohawks (the Native American culture in the region)
B. Malaeska’s evolution throughout the text—grows and matures—
young and immature at beginning—new wife and mother (goes along with husband and husband’s family)
later—goes back to tribe—realizes has left her identity behind
begins and ends with sacred death (husband first/child last)-a frame that shows how she’s changed because of her reaction to the deaths.
Her maturity limited—still believed all would work out even though evidence proved otherwise.
Was her decision at the end mature?—Should she have told William Jr. that he was her son?
over the top sentimental with her dead body on grave (with gray hair)
Son as last hope—nothing more to hold on to.
Bad decision—Why not tell William Jr. that = his mother when he was young? Chose to wait until they were reunited with her tribe (but never were).
6. Is Malaeska a complex character or a character type? = predictable—doesn’t change attitudes from beginning to end (husband and child love/ attitudes toward the natural world and Native American culture…--
When does she have the opportunities to mature and become her own person?
Abides by rules of patriarchal system—husband/ son’s father/ Indian chief (who decides her fate and lets her go).
Autonomous decisions—runs away from her husband’s family; sets herself up in business—survives independently. Chooses not to marry the chief—still in love with dead husband.
Knows how to survive in the woods (bow, canoe…) . Brief period when = single mother instilled values in son, taught him skills to survive in the woods. Not a lady.
C. Roles of Women in the mid-nineteenth century (America)
submissive to a patriarch (father/husband) – God = ultimate patriarch
hard-working and loyal
wife vs. mother
education—different for women vs. men (accomplished—entertain and maintain morality in the household).
Roles complicated because of racial differences in the text
D. Race in text—
tainted blood (if mixed)
William, Jr. (mixed and dark)= passing for white
Unnatural to mix races
Mixed cultures/mixed biologies
E. Danforth (William Sr.):
1. not so hot—hidden marriage from all but Martha—hypocrite. 2. Accepted in both cultures—Mohawks adopted him (before killing) knowing about Malaeska. 3. Whites don’t know about her and her son. His god = only god worth seeking. 4. Whites = superior to Mohawks.
5. Bifurcations:
Savagery Vs. Civilization Natives Whites
F. Intertextuality:
1. Scarlet makes her stick out (Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales beginning in 1823—Last of Mohicans in 1826). Catherine Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie in 1825).
2. Influenced by American Romanticism: Nature—overkill in description. Mind-numbing nature. Nature = character. Religious view of nature and the natural world (transcendentalism) == closer to god in nature. Set in early/mid 1700s=sign that romantics looked to the past. Nature= cyclical.
3. History:
Pre-1600: Native American 1615-1675: New York Dutch/British 1664: New Amsterdam/New York 1675-1750: British expansion in New York (Malaeska’s setting)
As the star character of L.M. Montgomery’s famous series Anne of Green Gables, Anne (with an ‘e’!) Shirley, with her braids of fiery red hair, unending chatter, limitless imagination and unshakeable optimism, has been of the most cherished literary heroines around the world for more than 100 years.
An orphan since her parents died of fever when she was an infant, Anne long dreamed of finding a real home and a real family. Sent by mistake to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert - an elderly brother and sister living in Prince Edward Island - Anne is sure that she has found her place in the world once and for all. While Anne is romantic, poetic, and appreciative of the beauty in all things, she is also no powder puff. She is smart, independent, fearless, and imaginative. She questions the rules with an irreverence not socially acceptable at the time, especially for a female, yet still has a love of tradition.
The life of Anne Shirley is of a simpler time but it's also complex with a richness, colorfulness, fragrance, and spirit that articulates both Anne’s personality and her physical surroundings. The books are like a love letter to Prince Edward Island with almost every page containing a lovingly descriptive passage about the scenery, food, houses, nature and the people of the province. It is a time of line-dried sheets, homemade desserts, neighbors stopping by for a visit, and garden-fresh goodness. Treats are just that – treats. And they are rare and well deserved. It is not a life of excess but instead viewed that whatever you have in your life is a direct result of the amount of hard work you put into it. Life is full of sunshine, warm rain, picnics, apple blossoms, babbling brooks and the red dirt that is the foundation of the island. Anne embraces every moment in life with a curiosity and enthusiasm that seems almost as if this very day were her last.
Author Page from Site:
As the woman who introduced the world to the precocious and determined spirit of Anne Shirley, Lucy Maude Montgomery is one of the most beloved writers of all time.
While she gained her greatest fame from the Anne of Green Gables series, Montgomery was a prolific writer, publishing 20 novels and more than 500 short stories and poems. Understanding the conditions of Montgomery’s own childhood and upbringing, you can see its influence and inspiration in the books of Anne of Green Gables.
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) was born in Clifton (now called New London), Prince Edward Island, daughter of Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner Macneill. Her twenty-three-year-old mother died of tuberculosis when Maud was just twenty-one months old, and her maternal grandparents, Alexander and Lucy MacNeill, took over her care at the MacNeill homestead in Cavendish. She grew up in the seaside fishing and farming community, and knew intimately all of its beaches, woods, fields, and homes. In 1890 she was invited to visit her father and his new wife in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Homesick for PEI and not getting along with her new stepmother, Maud returned in 1891.
Maud graduated from Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown in 1894 and received a first-class teacher's license. At the convocation exercises, she read her essay on Shakespeare's "Portia" to an appreciative audience. Her first teaching job was in Bideford,Prince Edward Island and the Bideford Parsonage, where she boarded that winter, is now a museum in her honor.
Maud Montgomery saved just enough money in her first year of teaching to pay for one year at Dalhousie University in Halifax, thinking that a course in English literature might aid her writing career. She received her first payment for a poem while in Halifax, and won a newspaper contest for writing. She returned to PEI and continued teaching in different communities across the province. Apart from a ten-month stint as a newspaper reporter on the Halifax Daily Echo (1901-1902), she stayed with her grandmother until Lucy Woolner MacNeill died in 1911. She had many activities to keep her busy in Cavendish, she photographed, she worked on the Cavendish Literary Magazine, she kept scrapbooks and a journal, and she wrote and published poetry and short stories. She was ambitious to earn a living by her pen.
In 1906 Maud became engaged to Presbyterian minister, Ewan Macdonald. However, Maud was determined to stay with and care for her grandmother so that she could remain in her old home, so the two could not wed for another five years. Meanwhile, Montgomery decided to take the time away from her lucrative short story writing to write a novel. Anne of Green Gables was rejected several times before it was finally accepted by the L.C. Page Company in Boston. It was published in 1908 and became an immediate success. Anne of Green Gables changed Montgomery’s life. Suddenly she was a celebrity and began receiving fan mail. She earned what for the times was an enormous amount, despite the small royalty of the Page contract. For the rest of her life, she was to be famous and sought after.
Classic Young Adult Literature
Nilsen and Donnelson PDF: Introduction and History of YA Literature
History of YA LitHistory of Young Adult Literature PowerPoint
The Bildungsroman:
From The Victorian Web:
Victorian Web
The term Bildungsroman denotes a novel of all-around self-development. Used generally, it encompasses a few similar genres: the Entwicklungsroman, a story of general growth rather than self-culture; the Erziehungsroman, which focuses on training and formal education; and the Kunstlerroman, about the development of an artist. (The Space Between, 13) Although Great Expectations, Aurora Leigh, and Waterland may fit one of these more specific categories, for the purposes of comparison, I shall discuss the Bildungsroman genre as a whole and how it applies to all three. My definition of Bildungsroman is a distilled version of the one offered by Marianne Hirsch in "The Novel of Formation as Genre":
1. A Bildungsroman is, most generally, the story of a single individual's growth and development within the context of a defined social order. The growth process, at its roots a quest story, has been described as both "an apprenticeship to life" and a "search for meaningful existence within society."
2. To spur the hero or heroine on to their journey, some form of loss or discontent must jar them at an early stage away from the home or family setting.
3. The process of maturity is long, arduous, and gradual, consisting of repeated clashes between the protagonist's needs and desires and the views and judgments enforced by an unbending social order.
4. Eventually, the spirit and values of the social order become manifest in the protagonist, who is then accommodated into society. The novel ends with an assessment by the protagonist of himself and his new place in that society.
Great Expectations is widely considered to be a direct descendant of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, the prototypical Bildungsroman. Aurora Leigh takes the genre and complicates it with problems of gender in Victorian society. Waterland reconsiders personal growth in a postmodern context, using narrative not for description, but rather as the vehicle for maturation.
Malaeska—written in 1839 (serialized in The Ladies Companion/ published by Beadles in 1860)
Reading of Malaeska from ALAN Review
Ann S. Stephens
Ann Sophia Stephens was born on March 30, 1810 in Derby, Connecticut, she was the daughter of Ann and John Winterbotham. He was the manager of a woolen mill owned by Col. David Humphreys. Her grandfather was William Winterbotham. Her mother died early and she was brought up by her mother's sister, who eventually became her stepmother. She was educated at a dame school in South Britain, Connecticut and started writing at an early age. She married Edward Stephens, a printer from Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1831 and they relocated to Portland, Maine.
While in Portland, she and her husband co-founded, published and edited the Portland Magazine, a monthly literary periodical where some of her early work first appeared. The magazine was sold in 1837. They moved to New York where Ann took the job of editor to The Ladies Companion and where she could further her literary work. This was also the time she adopted the humorous pseudonym Jonathan Slick. Over the next few years she wrote over twenty-five serial novels plus short stories and poems for several well known periodicals which includedGodey's Lady's Book and Graham's Magazine. She started her own magazine Mrs Stephens' Illustrated New Monthly in 1856, it was published by her husband. The magazine merged with Peterson's Magazine a few years later. Her first novel Fashion and famine was published in 1854.
The term "dime novel" originated with Stephens's Maleaska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, printed in the first book in Beadle & Adams Beadle’s Dime Novels series, dated June 9, 1860. The novel was a reprint of Stephens's earlier serial that appeared in the Ladies' Companion magazine in February, March, and April 1839. Later, the Grolier Club listed Maleaska as the most influential book of 1860. Some of her other work includes High Life in New York (1843), Alice Copley: A Tale of Queen Mary's Time (1844), The Diamond Necklace and Other Tale(1846), The Old Homestead (1855), The Rejected Wife (1863) and A Noble Woman (1871).
Works:
A. Ambiguities in the Story/book:
1. How white settler and Indian princess got together; (miscegenation)
2. Whether or not the Indian shot at the white settler.
Previous to whites killing an Indian—Whites and Mohawks had an agreement to share hunting grounds.
Dutch
British (Americans)
Mohawks (the Native American culture in the region)
B. Malaeska’s evolution throughout the text—grows and matures—
6. Is Malaeska a complex character or a character type? = predictable—doesn’t change attitudes from beginning to end (husband and child love/ attitudes toward the natural world and Native American culture…--
When does she have the opportunities to mature and become her own person?
C. Roles of Women in the mid-nineteenth century (America)
D. Race in text—
E. Danforth (William Sr.):
1. not so hot—hidden marriage from all but Martha—hypocrite.
2. Accepted in both cultures—Mohawks adopted him (before killing) knowing about Malaeska.
3. Whites don’t know about her and her son. His god = only god worth seeking.
4. Whites = superior to Mohawks.
5. Bifurcations:
Savagery Vs. Civilization
Natives Whites
F. Intertextuality:
1. Scarlet makes her stick out (Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales beginning in 1823—Last of Mohicans in 1826). Catherine Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie in 1825).
2. Influenced by American Romanticism: Nature—overkill in description. Mind-numbing nature. Nature = character. Religious view of nature and the natural world (transcendentalism) == closer to god in nature. Set in early/mid 1700s=sign that romantics looked to the past. Nature= cyclical.
3. History:
Pre-1600: Native American
1615-1675: New York Dutch/British
1664: New Amsterdam/New York
1675-1750: British expansion in New York (Malaeska’s setting)
Ragged Dick—Background and Questions
Horatio Alger Biography
horatio alger
The Novel:
Horatio Alger Story—Rags to Riches Theory (American Dream)—Individual and Self-Reliance (+ help and luck)
A. Middle Class Values—American
- Hard Work
- Emphasis on the family (primarily nuclear)
- Honesty
- Compassion to others
- Being polite—manners
- Deeds determine consequences
- Education
- Religion—as a sense of morality
- Respectability
10.ResponsibilityB. Cultural Context of New York City
- Public Libraries
- Central Park
- Public Schools
- Created a market for boys and girls books—literacy
- Church
- Capitalism
- Realism?
- Intertextuality—conflict with other texts (ie. Huck Finn/Tom Sawyer)
- Girls’ books—Lamplighter/Wide, Wide World
10.Femininity---masculinity------self-control11.Publishing marketplace
Anne of Green Gables
Book from Gutenberg
Where is the Boy? Article from Lion and the Unicorn
Anne and Jane Austen
Forever Anne
Textual Information From Site:
As the star character of L.M. Montgomery’s famous series Anne of Green Gables, Anne (with an ‘e’!) Shirley, with her braids of fiery red hair, unending chatter, limitless imagination and unshakeable optimism, has been of the most cherished literary heroines around the world for more than 100 years.
An orphan since her parents died of fever when she was an infant, Anne long dreamed of finding a real home and a real family. Sent by mistake to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert - an elderly brother and sister living in Prince Edward Island - Anne is sure that she has found her place in the world once and for all.
While Anne is romantic, poetic, and appreciative of the beauty in all things, she is also no powder puff. She is smart, independent, fearless, and imaginative. She questions the rules with an irreverence not socially acceptable at the time, especially for a female, yet still has a love of tradition.
The life of Anne Shirley is of a simpler time but it's also complex with a richness, colorfulness, fragrance, and spirit that articulates both Anne’s personality and her physical surroundings. The books are like a love letter to Prince Edward Island with almost every page containing a lovingly descriptive passage about the scenery, food, houses, nature and the people of the province.
It is a time of line-dried sheets, homemade desserts, neighbors stopping by for a visit, and garden-fresh goodness. Treats are just that – treats. And they are rare and well deserved. It is not a life of excess but instead viewed that whatever you have in your life is a direct result of the amount of hard work you put into it. Life is full of sunshine, warm rain, picnics, apple blossoms, babbling brooks and the red dirt that is the foundation of the island. Anne embraces every moment in life with a curiosity and enthusiasm that seems almost as if this very day were her last.
Author Page from Site:
As the woman who introduced the world to the precocious and determined spirit of Anne Shirley, Lucy Maude Montgomery is one of the most beloved writers of all time.
While she gained her greatest fame from the Anne of Green Gables series, Montgomery was a prolific writer, publishing 20 novels and more than 500 short stories and poems. Understanding the conditions of Montgomery’s own childhood and upbringing, you can see its influence and inspiration in the books of Anne of Green Gables.
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) was born in Clifton (now called New London), Prince Edward Island, daughter of Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner Macneill. Her twenty-three-year-old mother died of tuberculosis when Maud was just twenty-one months old, and her maternal grandparents, Alexander and Lucy MacNeill, took over her care at the MacNeill homestead in Cavendish. She grew up in the seaside fishing and farming community, and knew intimately all of its beaches, woods, fields, and homes.
In 1890 she was invited to visit her father and his new wife in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Homesick for PEI and not getting along with her new stepmother, Maud returned in 1891.
Maud graduated from Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown in 1894 and received a first-class teacher's license. At the convocation exercises, she read her essay on Shakespeare's "Portia" to an appreciative audience. Her first teaching job was in Bideford,Prince Edward Island and the Bideford Parsonage, where she boarded that winter, is now a museum in her honor.
Maud Montgomery saved just enough money in her first year of teaching to pay for one year at Dalhousie University in Halifax, thinking that a course in English literature might aid her writing career. She received her first payment for a poem while in Halifax, and won a newspaper contest for writing. She returned to PEI and continued teaching in different communities across the province. Apart from a ten-month stint as a newspaper reporter on the Halifax Daily Echo (1901-1902), she stayed with her grandmother until Lucy Woolner MacNeill died in 1911. She had many activities to keep her busy in Cavendish, she photographed, she worked on the Cavendish Literary Magazine, she kept scrapbooks and a journal, and she wrote and published poetry and short stories. She was ambitious to earn a living by her pen.
In 1906 Maud became engaged to Presbyterian minister, Ewan Macdonald. However, Maud was determined to stay with and care for her grandmother so that she could remain in her old home, so the two could not wed for another five years. Meanwhile, Montgomery decided to take the time away from her lucrative short story writing to write a novel. Anne of Green Gables was rejected several times before it was finally accepted by the L.C. Page Company in Boston. It was published in 1908 and became an immediate success.
Anne of Green Gables changed Montgomery’s life. Suddenly she was a celebrity and began receiving fan mail. She earned what for the times was an enormous amount, despite the small royalty of the Page contract. For the rest of her life, she was to be famous and sought after.